Richmond rape trial opens to grisly details

Horror of assault on girl after dance is described

Updated 1:35 pm, Tuesday, June 4, 2013

From right, Elvis Torrentes, 21, John Crane Jr., 43, and Jose Montano, suspects in the Richmond High School gang rape, attend a preliminary hearing in Martinez on Monday.

From right, Elvis Torrentes, 21, John Crane Jr., 43, and Jose Montano, suspects in the Richmond High School gang rape, attend a preliminary hearing in Martinez on Monday.

Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle

Richmond rape trial opens to grisly details

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Nearly four years ago, police officers rushed to Richmond High School after a homecoming dance to find a collection of horrors strewn in a darkened courtyard: a ripped pair of underwear, an empty brandy bottle, a used condom, a high-heeled shoe still attached to a torn piece of pantyhose.

And, propped up by a metal beam under a picnic table, there was a 16-year-old girl - the owner of the underwear and the shoe.

She was drunk to the point of incoherence, scratched and bruised, and naked except for the purple dress that had been haphazardly pushed up around her 100-pound body.

That was the image a Contra Costa County prosecutor presented to a jury Monday as the first trial opened in connection with an alleged sexual assault on Oct. 24, 2009, that shocked the Bay Area.

Seven men were initially charged, and two of them - whose cases were joined together - now face gang-rape allegations that could send them to prison for the rest of their lives.

The men are being tried in Superior Court in Martinez in front of dual juries that will hear some evidence together and some separately, and prosecutor John Cope's opening statement on Monday concerned 20-year-old Marcelles Peter of Pinole.

Cope said the young man had admitted to police that he fondled the girl - and had, moreover, left semen in a condom found in the branches of a blackberry bush.

Peter's attorney, Gordon Brown, conceded in his opening remarks that the girl was badly mistreated and that his client was present when that happened.

Evidence questioned

But he told jurors that much of the evidence in the case was unreliable. He said only "trace DNA" from his client was found in the used condom - not DNA from semen - and that the crime scene had been compromised by gusty winds and a helicopter that landed to pick up the injured girl.

"I don't think we will ever know all that happened," Brown told the jury.

Opening statements for the second defendant, 22-year-old Jose Montano of Richmond, are scheduled for Tuesday.

The trial began after two other men, Manuel Ortega and Ari Morales, agreed to plea deals that sent them to prison for 32 and 27 years, respectively. A third defendant won a dismissal during a preliminary hearing, and two others, John Crane and Elvis Torrentes, still await trial.

Victim to testify

Cope said his trial witnesses will include Ortega, Morales and several other young men who were in the courtyard while the girl was set upon. But he warned that they would all seek to downplay their roles, offering only snippets of an attack that may have lasted more than two hours.

"They will minimize. They will not be truthful," Cope said. "They will say I was tying my shoe and didn't see that part."

The girl - referred to in court as "Jane Doe" - will also testify, though she remembers nothing of the attack, Cope said. Afterward, he said, she was found to have a 0.35 percent blood-alcohol level, more than four times the legal driving limit in California.

Peter is charged with three criminal counts: forcible rape, rape by foreign object and forced oral copulation. Each count alleges that he acted in concert with others and inflicted great bodily injuries on the victim.

Montano faces similar charges.

Cope said the attack began after the girl, who felt bored and hot inside the school gymnasium, left the dance after 8:30 p.m. She planned to call her father for a ride, the prosecutor said, but then heard a male classmate call out from the courtyard, "Hey you want to come party with us?"

"Jane Doe didn't do what we all would want our daughters to do and say, 'No thanks,' " Cope said.

20 possibly involved

The girl may have been flirtatious at first, especially after drinking brandy, but things quickly took a turn, Cope said. He said witnesses will testify that the girl was eventually punched, kicked and dragged around an area that included benches and dumpsters.

Someone assaulted her with a walkie-talkie and urinated on her. Someone else invited others on the street to join in, the prosecutor said.

At one point, Cope said, the boy who initially drew the girl into the courtyard used her cell phone to call her father, telling him that his daughter had performed well sexually.

As many as 20 young men may have participated in the attack or watched, Cope said, but none called the police.